Planning your next route
Garmin Courses
I always tend to get on the bike and head anywhere between a range of North and South East, drawn to the areas around my childhood hometown and the routes I know well. Why not as its familiar and I know what I'm going to get for the time and effort I'm investing...
...but I do like the unknown sometimes. A little bit of adventure puts a smile on my face. Whilst I don't mind seeing a trail, heading down it only to find it goes nowhere or ends on a busy road, I do get frustrated if the adventure doesn't flow well. Normally working full-time with kids to taxi about means I don't have loads of free time to explore, so if I get frustrated with a new direction, I end up going back to what I know.
This summer I found something to help...Garmin Connect
Course Planner. Granted you need a Garmin device to fix to your bike with
mapping capability to follow, which is expensive, but it takes away so much of
the frustration when on the bike. The feature to plan a course comes with a
mapping screen which highlights popular used tracks and trails based on other
Garmin connect user routes. It really helps as sometimes it’s hard to identify
bike tracks on online maps, even the national cycle routes aren’t highlighted
well.
So how do you do it…
Log into Garmin Connect and on the left-hand side expand the training option to select ‘Courses’.
Any courses you have saved from your previous activities are shown in the centre of the page. To create a new course, select the blue ‘create a course’ button.
A new page will pop up and you will be asked to select the type of activity. Make sure you select the activity closest to what you will be doing because the popularity heatmap that is displayed is dependent on the activity type. So, you don’t want to select ‘running’ for ‘Mountain biking’ as you could be sent down tracks suitable for running but not mtb.
You will also be asked your drawing method. I choose ‘custom’ so I can make any route I need.
Your then set to go. The screen appears ready to make a start. I highly suggest you select the ‘popularity heatmap’ on the right-hand side if it isn’t already selected. Zoom into the map to the point where you want to start and make the first selection.
Follow the trail and make points along the map. I’d recommend you don’t make the points to far apart especially on a curved track because if you do, when you are actually out there riding your Garmin device may flag that you are off course when actually you are just going around the corner.
It’s useful to zoom in and out of the map as you plot so you can see the overall direction you are travelling in with a mind of where you want to go roughly. It also picks up other trails on the heatmap. I generally have google maps open as well so you can flick to see the satellite view to double check what you are plotting is looking bikeable.
When you get to the end you can zoom out to see the over all route and the distance. Update the title at the top of the white box so you can identify it again. If you want to edit anything after saving, click on the three dots and select ‘edit’.
Once you are happy it’s time to send it to your device. If you have trouble sending it to your device via you laptop because your device isn’t connected then do it through your phone. Just open ‘Garmin Connect’ on your phone, click ‘Training’, click ‘courses’ and select the course. Then click on the three dots at the top right near the title and select ‘send to device’ from the drop down. Turn on your Garmin device and it should sync with the phone pulling down the course you have planned.
Then it’s time to get out there and try it!!
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